What Do You Call It

What do you call it when a movement takes up arms
And seizes power by the barrel of a gun
Moves into the homes of those they’ve dispossessed
And says this whole country is ours now that we’ve won
What do you call a government that forces families from their homes
And turns them into refugees
All the while complaining of these dirty tent-dwellers
That it’s they who want to drive us into the sea

What do you call a government that builds walls around the ghettos
And only looks at you through sniper sights
Who uses your cheap labor to build those very walls
While they tell the world how they believe in human rights
What do you call a government that makes war upon their neighbors
Who annexes land for living room
Who conducts a foreign policy based on threats and bombing raids
Whose opponents often end up in a prison or a tomb

What do you call a government who talks of enemies within
And seals off the camps to make sure they cannot eat
Who keeps their prisoners on diets to guarantee an early death
With their mantra, history cannot repeat
What do you call a government that puts numbers on the arms
Of the people that they torture and arrest
Whose soldiers commit war crimes systematically
While they proclaim their conduct is superior at best

What do you call a government that bombs its starving subjects
After taking from them everything they had
Whose citizens are soldiers, brainwashed to believe
Their opponents are fanatics, terrorists or mad
What do you call it when a movement takes up arms
And seizes power by the barrel of a gun
Moves into the homes of those they’ve dispossessed
And says this whole country is ours now that we’ve won

“What Do You Call It” appears on the 2013 Bandcamp album, Everything Can Change, on the 2013 CD, If I Had A Hammer, and on the 2014 CD and Bandcamp album, Falasteen, Habibti.

Israel is the country I’m talking about. But all the lines in this song are also things that were true of Nazi Germany. So, what do you call it? Either or both, in this case. You could also call it fascism, but that’s a matter of definitions.